The BBC has reported that:
Mortgage payments will be suspended across Italy as part of measures to soften the economic blow of coronavirus on households, a minister has said.
Laura Castelli, Italy's deputy economy minister, told Radio Anch'io: "Yes, that will be the case, for individuals and households."
Italy's banking lobby group ABI said lenders would offer debt holidays to small firms and families.
This is, of course, one of the proposals I made here a few days ago for managing this crisis. I suspect much of that plan will see the light of day.
Trump has it all wrong by the way: tax cuts are not the solution; payment holidays are.
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When I read this I thought about your prescient article from a few days ago.
The difference is also interesting: Italy doesn’t have its own sovereign currency so it can’t do the other part of your plan (printing Euros and giving them to the banks to cover any losses). Or can it? I’m never quite sure how exactly the Euro is set up.
It can’t do QE
That’s all
Rich says:
” I’m never quite sure how exactly the Euro is set up.”
Understandably so. When France and Germany needed to break the bounds of their fiscal deficit limit (or whatever it is actually called) they did so. When Italian banks needed to be bailed out expressly contrary to the newly established bailing-in agreed protocol the Italian government bailed them out.
Why Brexiteers find the EU to be a straitjacket is mysterious…. if they wanted blue passports why didn’t they just put blue covers on them ? It would have saved an awful lot of upheaval. New passports aren’t even recognisably blue …..
And the irony was that there was no reason we couldn’t have had blue passports anyway.
Bank debt holiday
Once again, Capital is being protected, with no imperative to pass the money down( to the renter).
Why can’t economists/politicians understand that its Revenue that people buy food with?
Impossible apparently….
I recall from a few days ago the claim that Landlords had broad shoulders, broader indeed than government, and so were best placed to take an extra proportion of the economic hit from the coronavirus. The objection came from some landlords that some were just covering their mortgage payments from rental income, and the counter to that argument is that because they’d been able to take out a mortgage in the first place they were credit-worthy people and could obtain further credit again if need be.
So the Italian government wants to help people who are already established as being credit-worthy to have mortgages in the first place. Might be a good idea, might not, but this idea is praised.
Donald Trump thinks that government can take a hit on its tax receipts ( which don’t pay for spending or so I’m told ). Might work, might not, but this idea is opposed in strong terms.